The Matrix was a smash in 1999 for Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss

Science fiction fans and modern philosophers have long debated whether the world is actually the same as we perceive it to be.

Following the popularity of 90s classic The Matrix, many have questioned whether the philosophical "Brain in a Vat" scenario may actually be our reality.

But the notion that a computer could create such a huge scale of simultaneous interactions is "impossible", according to research published in Science Advances.

After doing some mind-bending sums, Zohar Ringel and Dmitry Kovrizhi calculated that simply storing information about a couple of hundred electrons (very, very tiny particles) would need computer memory that requires more atoms that exist in the universe.

It pours water on the gloomy theory that was cited by Professor Brian Cox, that our entire universe may have been created by a "super-intelligent computer programmer".

As Andrew Masterton, editor of Cosmos wrote: "Given the physically impossible amount of computer grunt needed to store information for just one member of this subset, fears that we might be unknowingly living in some vast version of The Matrix can now be put to rest".

Of course, that's exactly what those extraterrestrial supercomputer programmers would want us to think, right?

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